Look, we’ve all done it. We’ve seen a gossipy headline on our computer screen that we simply can’t resist: have George and Amal Clooney really decided to call it quits? Did the Mexican government actually announce that Mexico will close its borders to Americans if Donald Trump is elected President? For some of us, the teaser (also known as clickbait) is too irresistible to pass up. Must. Read. More.
Some people would argue that clicking on the bait is a victimless crime — that just as we reach for the current issue of OK! magazine at the hair salon, we are occasionally entitled to indulge in a little salacious gossip. They are wrong.
In addition to creating reputational harm to those targeted in the fake news, by clicking on it you are helping to generate advertising revenue for the offending site. By “liking” it or otherwise disseminating it to your friends, you are actually advancing its wide reach, which in turn has the potential to sway elections, damage careers, and even affect the ability of our leaders to govern. With a simple click, you are creating the financial incentive for more fake news. And in this way, you perpetuate the vicious cycle.
The New York Times recently reported on the phenomenon of fake news, interviewing a computer science student in Tbilisi who created, and profited from, a series of authentic-looking, U.S. election news sites that contained false stories about Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and other public figures. One of his sites, usatodaycom.com, has no connection to the legitimate news source USA Today, although its domain name is designed to mislead you into thinking it does.
President Obama has spoken about the dangers of fake news, and Facebook and Google are now searching for ways to flag fake news and prevent users from financially profiting from it.
Still, I continue to feel the impact of fake news in the places I least expect it. At my last book club meeting, surrounded by an impressive group of women who hold diverse political views as well as graduate degrees from elite universities, one member told the group she was appalled that Mike Pence supports federal funding for electric shock gay conversion therapy, and another had heard that Pence used gay conversion therapy to save his marriage. Pence’s views on gay rights have rightly landed him in hot water with many Americans, and for good reason, but what about these new claims? Did Pence really support federal funding for, and had he really been the beneficiary of, a misguided pseudo-therapy so anachronistic it could have been used alongside leeches in the Middle Ages? Whatever one’s views of Pence, something about these claims didn’t sound right. A quick internet search turned up no report of the claims on any major news site, such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Huffington Post, CNN, or NBC News. If true, presumably they would have shown up in one or more of these publications. I also checked the rumor-verification website snopes.com, which dispelled the veracity of much of the offending belief that had been attributed to Pence. Since our book club meeting, the New York Times published an article giving full consideration to the subject, an article that didn’t even acknowledge the most bizarre of the claims, that Pence himself had used conversion therapy.
The lesson from all of this? It is important to pay attention to the source of the “news” that bombards us online every day. Have a healthy dose of skepticism, particularly if the credibility of the news source is questionable or unknown.
Fake news is a real problem. Here are five things you can do to help combat it.
- If something sounds too outrageous to be true, it probably is. Don’t click the bait. It will only perpetuate the problem.
- Don’t believe what you read on an unverified, online news site until you’ve checked it on snopes.com or, even better, in the major news publications.
- Don’t retweet or otherwise spread false, misleading or libelous gossip masquerading as news. Wait a bit and see if it’s true. The copy editors and fact checkers employed by the major news outlets are paid to separate fact from fiction.
- Insist on veracity and integrity in journalism. If enough people want it, perhaps the industry will develop a journalistic certification process to accredit the news outlets — including smaller, lesser-known, online ones — that employ responsible journalistic practices.
- Before clicking or disseminating “news,” remember the important lesson learned by BuzzFeed and reported in the Columbia Journalism Review: while speed and revenue-producing shock value may be tempting, when it comes to news, “getting things right from the start turns out to have considerable value.” Pass it on.